Bamboo as a New Retrofitting Material for Existing Masonry Walls with Improving the Walls Aesthetic View

Abstract

Sri Lankan architecture is mainly based on masonry since ancient time. Among different types of masonry, Un-Reinforced Masonry (URM) construction has possessed the local culture of Sri Lanka especially in home/ residential building construction since ancient time. Unfortunately, URM buildings are the most vulnerable for earthquakes. It reveals that, the need of introducing proper techniques for retrofitting of URM buildings, especially for existing buildings is time essential. Bamboo is a unique building material in that it is strong in both rigidity and density; is now being used more prominently in all types of architecture. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performances of bamboo strips as an architectural material to retrofitting the existing URM walls against earthquakes. The test walls were constructed in double wythe with the size of 600 x 600 x 215 mm and retrofitted by using bamboo strips arranging as a mesh with the pitch of 50 mm. The retrofitted walls and the control wall were subjected to diagonal compression test. Bamboo strip mesh help the masonry wall to increase lateral resistance by 172.6%, compared to the non-retrofitted wall. Retrofitting technique improve the initial stiffness, energy dissipation and deformation capacity of the URM wall. Bamboo strip mesh enhances the ductility of URM walls. Therefore, Retrofitting of URM walls with bamboo strip mesh proved to be an effective and reliable strengthening technique against earthquake while improving the aesthetic view of the wall.